The curtain opens on a set consisting of a twenty-foot-high hill
of red silk flowers in one corner, an image that alludes to Hong Kong
region's geography, as well as to the impending onslaught of
Bauschian imagery. It is morning. A young girl greets us, repeating
"Hello, good morning" with a saccharine smile, while others go
through the mundane actions of shaving, dressing, and fixing their
hair with a synchronization and smoothness that elevates the actions
to dance. One desperate soul attempts to please her guests--the
audience--by offering coffee, food, or soft drinks. A lone window
washer attemps a ludicrous task: behind a reflective sheet of
plastic, suspended in a seat with squeegee and pail, he trys to keep
the glass surfaces of Hong Kong's glimmering neon cityscape free of
grime and glare. His lonely toil, contrasted with his later
appearances as a well-dressed, pipe-smoking, poodle-toting gentleman,
reminds us of the gap between rich and poor, worker and dandy.

Bausch wants us to look in, and look inward. Her beautiful and
disturbing images anticipate the horror or delight of recognizing
ourselves within her own dark world. As in Palermo, Palermo, a 1989
work set in the Sicilian city, Hong Kong is merely a backdrop. Bausch
integrates pieces of its life: the mountain of red bauhinia flowers,
the rope bridge, the karaoke, and the crowded
people-and-bicycle-filled streets. Yet her well-known theatrical
tropes carry the show's style: the vintage dresses, the stiletto
heels, the obsessions with cleaning and sweeping. Then there are the
absurdist encounters, such as a man who seems to be speaking
seductively to a woman while his words are that of a loudspeaker
paging a passenger in an airport. Or there are the men who, one after
another tumble into and leap out of a woman's bed while she tries to
fluff up the pillows and stay out of their way. Both vignettes are
comic takes on the harried, anonymous mating rituals of modern
life.

Bausch is capable of startling, strange, and beautiful
combinations of dance and theatre. Her abilities are clearly present
in one scene from Der Fensterputzer, in which a lone man wearing skis
slowly, deliberately sidesteps up the flower mound before swooshing
down to the stage, only to repeat his task over and over. Here, in
the midst of a lesser Bausch work, is a wonderful evocation of a
skiing Sisyphus. Bausch is at her best in sections like this, which
imbue the work with layered meanings and begin to create true
theatrical magic.